Two U.S. Navy ships are on their way to South American waters to monitor and intercept airborne and seaborne drug traffic off the coast of Colombia, Bush Administration sources said Saturday. The aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and the nuclear-powered cruiser Virginia left Norfolk, Va., on Thursday night and are expected to be on station in international waters off Colombia within the next several days.

As retirements go, the Point Stuart's will be a short one. The Newport Harbor-based Coast Guard cutter will be formally taken out of service today, sandblasted, repainted a neutral white and handed over to the Salvadoran navy, which will put the 82-foot Point Stuart right back to work.

As retirements go, the Point Stuart's will be a short one. The Newport Harbor-based Coast Guard cutter will be formally taken out of service today, sandblasted, repainted a neutral white and handed over to the El Salvadoran navy, which will put the 82-foot Point Stuart right back to work.

A burst of superheated steam killed 10 American sailors Tuesday in a boiler-room accident aboard a Navy assault ship, forcing a scale-back of a new exercise testing a possible amphibious landing in the Persian Gulf conflict. The break in a high-pressure steam line came just minutes after the 29-year-old Iwo Jima pulled out of port in Manama, Bahrain, where it had undergone five days of repairs, according to military officials here.

Patrick Howard Roy and Lakeina Monique Francis, two of the 17 sailors killed in the Oct. 12 bomb attack on the U.S. guided missile destroyer Cole in Yemen, were buried Saturday. Roy's burial at Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md., was the first in 22 years at the cemetery, where most of the graves are those of Civil War soldiers.

Just in case there were any lingering doubts, Long Beach tourism boosters have served notice that the Cold War is officially over. How else to explain the sudden (but peaceful) appearance of a Soviet Union Foxtrot-class submarine in the city's harbor last week?

The Bush Administration is readying a fiscal 1992 defense budget that would continue the cutback in military spending begun last year, despite the stepped-up war in the Persian Gulf and recent setbacks in the Soviet Union's move toward democratic reforms. The new spending plan, to be disclosed on Monday, is expected to propose cutting military outlays by a sharp 3.3% after inflation, reducing further the number of military personnel and canceling two key nuclear missile programs.

Eleven pilots from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station fidgeted nervously this week, waiting for the sun to go down so they could show their stuff. They had trained for years to make their first nighttime landings on an aircraft carrier, a feat even the most seasoned fighter pilots claim "can raise your heartbeat to that of a scared rabbit." "I flew into combat 33 times in the Persian Gulf," said Navy Lt. Michael E.

Led by a sturdy tugboat and tailed by a flotilla of sailboats, the hulking battleship Missouri took a last, stately waltz in the waters of Waikiki on Sunday before heading to its retirement home at Pearl Harbor. Residents and tourists lined up along the beach promenade to get a glimpse of the "Mighty Mo" on the open sea for the final time in its half-century career. As the 887-foot behemoth rounded Diamond Head and came into view, some onlookers broke into applause.

A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine surfacing during routine operations Friday off the coast of Hawaii struck and sank a Japanese fishing vessel carrying 35 people, including 13 students from a fisheries high school, authorities here said. Coast Guard teams rescued 26 of those who had been aboard the 150-foot fishing boat, identified as the Ehime Maru, but nine people were still missing as rescue efforts continued into the evening.